1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a table tennis ball-sorting device and a table tennis apparatus including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, a table tennis apparatus, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 3017687 has been proposed. Such a conventional table tennis apparatus includes a table having a net stretched on the center thereof, a ball projecting section that is disposed on the rearward of one playing surface (a playing surface on the side of a machine) and that projects, i.e. ejects, table tennis balls sequentially towards the other surface (a playing surface on the side of a player), wherein a plurality of optical sensors, each having a light emitting element and a light receiving element, are opposingly arranged on the left and right of the playing surface on the machine side along a longitudinal direction thereof. A drop position of the ball returned by the player on the machine-side playing surface is detected by the optical sensors, and a score corresponding to the position is given to the player. The result of a training thereby being displayed by a specific numeral value.
According to the conventional table tennis apparatus constructed as described above, balls returned or failing to be hit by the player are collected by an air flow formed along the floor to a collecting port, and returned by a negative pressure towards the ball projecting section through a hose. This enables the player to play continuously with a fixed number of balls. The construction of the ball projecting section of the table tennis apparatus is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 58-22229 and Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 63-7264.
According to the above conventional table tennis apparatus, however, faulty balls that are erroneously stamped on and deformed by the player's foot have been also collected and returned to the ball projecting section, and are projected from the ball projecting section after a lapse of a fixed period of time, so that normal proceeding of a game (training) may be prevented. In addition, since the player cannot continue the game when the number of faulty balls mixed into the ball projecting section increases, the faulty balls should be periodically manually sorted, and the maintenance of the apparatus becomes complicated.